T3 Towers Rotterdam

Introduction

MEGA was a course on interdisciplinary design of Large scale highrise buildings with discipline specific roles for the students involved. I was the computational designer for the team responsible for :

1. Setting a collaborative digital workflow across disciplines .
2. Developing interdisciplinary parametric design strategies/methods.
3. Developing processes for performance analysis with simulation tools.
4. Setting feedback loops between numeric assessments and geometric modelling.
5. Co-ordinating digital interaction between design, engineering, analysis, manufacturing and construction.

Design Concept:

The main intention behind the design was to create a landmark project for the makers district of Rotterdam. We scattered the functions over the available site, thereby creating 3 distinctive,elegant and interacting high-rise towers that come together in the central atrium. Due to their curving shapes, the towers open up to the outside public, radiate transparency, invite locals and visitors, and serve its surroundings. From each angle, the sight lines towards and through the building change, making it a complex that reveals ever more of itself. It has truly become the landmark that mimics the versatility of the area and the connection between the city of Rotterdam and its port. Also, it connects and merges the historical, industrial environment with the new redevelopment plans and the innovative way of thinking for the future.

Workflow for the project :

The workflow for the project was divided into two stages before and after the design was finalized. Before the design finalization I developed a fully integrated parametric design tool which all the other disciplines in the project could use to check the consequences of the design decisions taken by the architect in the team on their own discipline as well as to design and share their own disciplinary ideas. The speckle platform was used to share data-streams between the disciplines.

The workflow after the design finalization involved generation of collaborative BIM-models where I established the workflow for BIM 360 for all the team members and transferring the mass customised 3d elements from the paramateric model to the BIM model using Rhino-Inside, Hummingbird and Speckle.

Integrated parametric tool :

The idea behind the integrated parametric tool was to develop various paramateric modules for design and engineering analysis for all the disciplines in a integrated connected manner to create a feedback loop for everyone involved. Based on the basic sketches of the Architect the first module of the tool which was the Digital Lego was developed.

1. Digital Lego (rapid volumetric iterations) : The main idea behind this tool was to create a volumetric design tool for the architect to iterate through the zoning options for the building very rapidly. The overall volumes were considered and there was an option within the tool to split up the total volume into smaller zones. Certain basic preliminary spatial indicators like sun-light hours and self shading were considered and a genetic algorithm was also used to generate iterations by varying the geometrical shaping paramaters of the buildings. Feedback with respect to the total floor area and percentage of shading was generated for each iteration.
2. Form generation module (Twist,Tilt,Taper): Once the iteration from the volumetric design tool was selected the form was refined. The selected design consisted of three towers each having a twist tilt and taper in their form. The tool developed to design this had interdisciplinary functions: The first one being to find the appropriate combination of the the three shaping actions architecturally .Secondly finding the impact of the actions on the deflection and stress on the core- outrigger system which would be developed by the structural design team and finally the impact of the actions taken by the architect on the surface geometries of the facades. To develop the structural design modules to checkj the deflection of the core and the size of the outriggers karamba was used and for finding the impact of the twist and tilt on facades panelling tools were used .
3. Form refinement module (Twist,Tilt,Taper): In the from refinement tool the modules for optimization of the form developed in the form generation tool were defined. The acceptable range of Twist Taper and Tilt were determined in the previous module and those were used as variable paramaters for the evolutionary optimization process. The plugin octopus was used for multi-objective optimization where the objective function consisted of a values related to sunlight hours on the facades, structural core deflection, outrigger sizes, surface angles created for the facades and the total builtup area.The output from the optimization process was the final shape of the building.
4. Facade design module: In the facade design module the design of the fins flowing along the doubly curved surfaces as well as the form improvement of the facade panels themselves was done. The density of the fins was with respect to the archiutectural vision and according to the climate designers calculations and the depth was calculated based on the total shading effect that they had on the overall facade. The surfaces themselves were rationalized into panels and the lines for the inner layer of the facade was also developed by projecting the surface lines into the floor plates. An optimization was run for determing the appropriate depth of the fins for each floor so that the effect of sun-shading is maximised.

5. Atrium design module: The shape of the atrium roof and the flectofold panels on top of the roof were the two main elements which were designed using the atrium design tool. The concept of dynamic relaxation was used for generating the form of the roof. The kangaroo solver was used for simulating the relaxation algorithm.

   

This tool allowed the architect to modify form and forces in the system without having the explicit knowledge about the underlying process and code. Once the acceptable form was derived both architecturally and structurally a optimization was done again on the sizes of the members of the roof using Karammba analysis and eovutionary optimization using octopus plugin. The secoond part of the tool was the design for the flectofold shaders on top of the glass ceiling. The shaders were designed to be responsive towards the time of the day for the particular site. The sun positions for the site were mapped for the critical times and the angle of rotation of the panels was defined based on that.

Climate design assistance:

In the project, I also assisted the climate designer to run CFD simulations, Heating and cooling simulations as well as generating grasshopper scripts for checking the compliance with evacuation distances on all floors on Ladybug tools and Phoenics CFD simulation software.

Structural design assistance:

The structural design script for the core and outrigger system was also setup by me and further lateral design analysis was done by the structural designer in the team on Karamba FEA analysis. Post analysis and preliminary design in Rhino and Grasshopper the model was pushed to GSA sftware using Speckle.